Abstract
<jats:p>Jerzy Woszczynin: dispersed auto/bio/geo/graphy The book Jerzy Woszczynin: auto/bio/geo/graf&iacute;a dispersa is devoted to Jerzy Kazimierz Woszczynin &ndash; a Polish writer and poet who settled in Argentina after World War II. His rich yet scattered literary output &ndash; encompassing poetry, prose, memoirs, and journalistic writings &ndash; remained largely unknown to a wider readership for decades, even though he was one of the most prominent figures of the Polish &eacute;migr&eacute; literary community in Argentina and an active co-creator of its cultural life. Woszczynin&rsquo;s work, deeply autobiographical in nature and written over several decades, serves as a priceless mirror of the pivotal events that unfolded in Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. Thanks to the donation of an extensive family archive by the writer&rsquo;s daughter, Jolanta Woszczynin &ndash; including manuscripts, typescripts, correspondence, and press clippings &ndash; it became possible to reconstruct and critically examine his literary legacy. Both his published works in the &eacute;migr&eacute; press and his unpublished typescripts served as the basis for a reconstruction of his biography. Woszczynin&rsquo;s oeuvre is analyzed from a literary-studies perspective, and the discussion is framed within theoretical reflections on autobiographical writing, geopoetics, and memory studies. The book follows the successive points on the writer&rsquo;s life map, as he described them in his works. The author of Sonety z Pampy [Sonnets of the Pampa], Listy z Selwy [Letters from the Selva], and Dziennik z Patagonii [Diary from Patagonia] combined documentary realism with poetic sensitivity, creating a literary cartography of destiny stretched between the lost Polish Borderlands and the Argentine pampas. Following Małgorzata Czermińska&rsquo;s concept of the &laquo;autobiographical place&raquo;, the study captures the interrelation between literature and space, revealing them as carriers of both individual and collective memory. In this sense, the present volume is not only a monograph of a writer, but also a reflection on literature as a form of memory &ndash; a sphere in which biography and geography intersect, and where personal experience attains a communal dimension. The publication was written in Spanish in order to bring the story of Polish emigrants in Argentina closer to the descendants of the local Polish community &ndash; many of whom today no longer speak the language of their ancestors &ndash; and to embed the Polish &eacute;migr&eacute; experience within the broader history of South American culture. The analyses presented in the monograph are illustrated with extensive quotations from Woszczynin&rsquo;s works, translated into Spanish, which allows readers to engage directly with his texts rather than through interpretative mediation alone. At the same time, all quotations are also provided in their original Polish version, enabling readers familiar with the language to appreciate Woszczynin&rsquo;s distinctive style &ndash; to perceive the rhythm and melody of his sentences and the linguistic devices through which he constructed the image of his life. The language of his works constitutes an integral part of their meaning: it is not merely a tool for depicting the world, but also a bearer of identity. The purpose of the monograph, therefore, is both to restore the legacy of a forgotten writer of the Polish diaspora in Argentina and to broaden knowledge about the Polish literary milieu that flourished in that country.</jats:p>